keyJ says:

I found that I makes a difference whether you install it as a plugin (from github) or a gem. With the gem I could not get the route to accept the :subdomain-condition correctly. But then I installed the plugin with ./script/plugin install…
and all of a sudden it worked fine.

This got me a step closer. When I restarted Apache I got this error message:
undefined method `guard_condition' for class `ActionController::Routing::Optimisation::PositionalArgumentsWithAdditionalParams'

I eventually figured out that this code was added a couple months ago - I removed the code referenced in the blog post and now my routing issues are resolved.

The Good
C# is automatically faster because everyone knows Ruby is slow and that rails can’t scale.
Seriously though, the port to C# uses resource files so internationalization is handled by simply adding a translated resource file to your project.

The Bad
C# doesn’t have the concept of static extension methods. To me DateTime.DistanceOfTimeInWords would be much nicer than DateHelper.DistanceOfTimeInWords.
Range support in the language is hokey at best. No ranges in switch statements. bleh.

The Ugly
The code! If you compare the C# version to the Ruby version it’s a little ahhhhhhhhhhh… inelegant? The Ruby version weighs in at 28 lines of readable code. The C# version is a b-e-a-s-t with 55 lines of code including 2 helper methods. I’m open to any suggestions in making the C# code shorter or more readable.

The Rest
The method time_ago_in_words has also been ported. Altogether the helper code is 74 lines - also included is over 250 lines of test code. All examples listed on the Rails page were also included in the test.

You can grab the code here or at the subversion repository http://svn.gaskell.org/helpers

jQuery is also really easy to extend - I wrote a couple of extensions that would be usable throughout an application. Here’s the extension I wrote to produce the ubiquitous yellow fade effect:

(function($) {
   $.fn.yellowFade = function() {
    return this.css({backgroundColor: "#ffffcc"})
    .animate({backgroundColor: "#ffffff"}, 1500, "linear");
   }
 })(jQuery);

Calling this method flows with the rest of jQuery style chaining of methods:

function(data) { $("div#basket").html(data).yellowFade(); });

This one liner is a callback from our http post to the /Cart/AddProduct. The data parameter contains the response from the server. $("div#basket") is getting the container div from our shopping cart. Then we replace the html within the shopping cart div with the response from the server and follow it up with a yellow fade to provide user feedback.

Code is downloadable here. The demo.

I was checking out Hanselman’s Ajax example (the truly lazy can download the code here) and I was pretty bummed when I disabled javascript and saw this:

Oops. That’s probably not what the user expected. Maybe there’s some way to get the AjaxHelper to save us but none of the 10 overloads for the ActionLink or Form methods stood out to me. Until I get around to really learning jQuery, I’ll stick with writing Ajax by hand. This allows me to request different urls based on whether or not javascript is enabled. And writing your own javascript really isn’t that hard - go grab a good book.

This method didn’t work for me on the day I received my MSDN shipment - I had to wait a couple days for it to work.

To install the dependencies I used:

sudo apt-get install python-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev liblame-dev libfaad-dev libasound2-dev python-pygame

I had to go to /usr/bin and run this as Michael suggests:

ln -s g++-3.4 g++

Filezilla isn’t quite as pretty as SmartFTP but FileZilla does have a local and remote browser similiar to SmartFTP - super easy to use. I’ve used it to upload and modify files on my host as well as FTP files over to a WinCE device that I’m developing on - so far it’s worked great.

If you want to be able to use your files after you download them, you’ll need to either use the Group Policy Editor described here in as Method #3 or edit the registry.

Unfortunately I happen to be running Windows Vista Home Premium on one of my systems - this means no gpedit. The entry we need to set is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Attachments\SaveZoneInformation

This value needs to be a DWORD set to 1. You can enter this manually or download the reg file and “Unblock” your last file! Be sure to close all instances of Internet Explorer or reboot your computer after making the change to your registry.